BELARUS NEWS AND ANALYSIS

DATE:

09/06/2009

Russia,Belarus,Kazakhstan Seek Group WTO Entry -Putin

MOSCOW (AFP)--Russia, Belarus and Kazakhstan will seek World Trade Organization membership as a single customs bloc, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin said Tuesday, spelling the end for accession talks as single states.

Putin said the countries' prime ministers had decided at a meeting in Moscow "to inform the WTO about their intention to start a negotiating process for membership of Belarus, Kazakhstan and Russia as a single customs union.

"The governments will inform the WTO about the halt of the process for the membership of Belarus, Kazakhstan and Russia" as individual states, he said.

Belarus and neighboring Russia already have a formal customs union, which Kazakhstan has said it also wants to join.

Russia is the largest world economy still outside the WTO. Initial membership negotiations began in 1993 but have been delayed by disputes over a variety of issues and were set back by Russia's war with Georgia last year.

Reading out a joint statement by the three prime ministers, Putin said they had agreed that lately the process for WTO accession had been a "brake" for further trade integration between the countries.

He said the three countries had agreed to synchronize their customs tariffs from the start of 2010 and to implement a single customs area from mid-2011.

"Our priority is still membership in the WTO but as a single customs area," Putin declared.

"We want to have special relations with the European Union but also within the accord that we are going to sign," he said.

The International Monetary Fund earlier this month expressed concern that Russia's desire to join the WTO had slackened off, following the visit of an IMF mission to Moscow.

President Dmitry Medvedev said in April that delays to its membership of the global trade body had "irritated" Moscow and it wouldn't allow the process to become a "never-ending story."

The announcement from the three countries came despite strains between Moscow and Minsk that have included outbursts from Belarussian President Alexander Lukashenko and a Russian ban on some Belarussian milk products.

However Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov denied Tuesday the milk ban amounted to "political sanctions," a point echoed by visiting Belarussian Foreign Minister Sergei Martynov.

"We see nothing political in this," Martynov said.

Source:

http://www.easybourse.com/bourse-actualite/marches/2nd-updaterussia-belarus-kazakhstan-seek-group-wto-entry-681353

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